


This Is

by BluBerd



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, greasemonkey! Sirius, kitchen romance, like the most rated g thing anyone has ever written, remus is a pine tree, this fic will wash away all your impurities, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 08:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8049751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluBerd/pseuds/BluBerd
Summary: It's been a long time coming.





	This Is

Maybe it's the sun that wakes you up; maybe it's the damned birds; maybe it's the cartoonishly loud snoring coming from James and Peter on the floor; maybe it's just your own aching bones working against you. Regardless of the reason, you're awake-- bleary eyed and unwilling, but awake.

You sit up on the couch and take a few moments to get your bearings-- bury your head in your hands, elbows on your knees. The pulsing in your head eventually quiets enough that you deem it safe to move. Your first trip is to the bathroom.

Then comes the kitchen, but it takes you a while to get there.

You stand in front of the refrigerator in a daze for a full minute before you realize you're acting a right tit and grab some things to put in your roiling stomach.

Pan on the stove. Bacon in the pan. Cook it slowly while you down as much water as you can at once to try to calm the pain in your head. Stomach roils more violently. Turn up the heat on the bacon just a touch. Sit on a stool by the food to wait.

Sirius walks through the door whistling and covered in engine grease, looking like he's never in his life heard the word "hangover." You allow yourself a shallow moment to hate him- he had just as much to drink last night as the rest of you, after all--where does he get the nerve to be such a _morning person_ is all you want to know.

"You look chipper," your voice sounds even worse than you suspected it would.

He grins and your stomach flips in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol. "Early bird gets the last of the hangover cure and all that."

You groan and face plant on the kitchen counter just to the left of where your breakfast gently warms.

A set of heavenly fingers find your shoulders and dig gently into the meat of the tense muscles around your neck. "A touch lower--"

The fingers comply and you find yourself letting go of some of the hate within you.

"Have you eaten already?"

The fingers leave you suddenly bereft, "Figured I'd wait for you lot to wake up. James and Peter?" You hear the sound of running water from the sink.

"Still snoring happily away," you say to the formica counter top, voice sounding almost too loud as it bounces off the hard surface and right back to your ears.

"Hmm, lazy lot aren't they?" and this time the fingers are back but now they're clear up at your scalp and slightly damp and you are one extremely happy customer.

"Mm," and it's a good thing that you're still half asleep because otherwise you might be overanalyzing, as you have a tendency to do. You might be thinking about the gentle warmth and pressure of his fingers against your skin or the way that he came in from tinkering just after you walked into the kitchen so you know he must have been waiting for you.

Ugh. Perhaps you're waking up after all.

"Should we wake them, then?" you say, more to distract yourself than anything else.

The fingers pause contemplatively before resuming their holy duty. "Let 'em sleep. It was a late night."

And of course you're not going to disagree. Somehow, living in this house (alone. with Sirius.) still doesn't get you enough time with him. If he doesn't want to interrupt a moment together then you obviously aren't going to argue. But you're also not going to wonder if he's thinking something along the same lines. Because he isn't, and that way madness lies.

You lose track of exactly how long you slouch there on the stool, breathing into the counter as your dear friend and housemate leeches all of the tension out of your body through his fingertips, but the bacon is only just starting to sizzle and, at the low heat you set, that means it can't have been longer than a minute or two.

Reluctantly you sit up to mind the frying pan, but Sirius doesn't step back to accommodate the new position and, suddenly, he's too close. You can smell the leather from his jacket. You feel your heart thump in your chest. You try not to make it weird-- set your attention to the bacon just to your side, pretending that you don't feel ( _acutely_ ) the heat of his body against your back.

Pretending has never really been your strong suit.

You pick up a fork to mind the breakfast. You feel a blush prickling up your neck and blossoming to blotchy life on your face. Your heart pounds louder in your chest. You're certain that he can feel it against his abdomen, resounding through the bones of your back, can tell that you're breathing a bit faster than you were--

It has been approximately 5 seconds since you changed your posture. His fingers are still against your scalp.

He _leans into you._

You are _completely frozen_ next to the stove, silverware forgotten in your hand.

"Remus," he _breathes_ into your ear, nose practically _nuzzling_ into your hair. Your skin burns where he touches it.

Now, touch itself is nothing special when it comes from Sirius Black. Sirius is a tactile creature- is constantly touching someone. Arm over the shoulder; cuddled up on the couch; ruffling James' hair; kicking Peter's leg; nudging elbows; trading massages; poking bellies; smacking bums.

But this is definitely outside the realm of typical behavior.

Grease-stained aristocratic fingers drag maddeningly down your neck. Your shoulders. Down your back, and across your hips to where they eventually settle on the sides of your thighs. Effectively caging you in place, but resting gently. Like he doesn't want to scare you away. Like this is fragile-- suspended in a dream. Like he doesn't want to wake you up.

You don't want to wake up.

This is a long time coming, after all.

This is the careful camaraderie of being 11 years old, away, for the first time, from the behavioral influences of parents and grandparents and neighbors and family friends. This is the thrill of those first days away and the naughty joy of those first too-late nights and the naivety with which you forged the bonds of new, fragile friendship that didn't yet know it was too tentative to be strong. This is the barely detectable hope in your stomach for a future that involves more happiness than you had ever imagined possible.

This is the revelation at 12. This is the terror of being found out-- The moment you have feared since before you even knew what was at stake (though you certainly know now.) This is the moment you realize that you aren't the island that you tried to be--that losing the friends and the home and the vision for a future (that you had coached yourself into thinking impossible) would destroy you if the ministry didn't do it first. This is the moment that the allies you have tried so hard to keep at arm's length step past your carefully constructed walls as if they were so many pebbles scattered across the earth. This is the moment that the dangerous effusive hope in your stomach coalesces into a tiny, hard seed and begins to grow.

This is the excited reunion at 13, a moment filled with memories you don't yet know are small in light of what will come. This is the realization at the very back of your mind that you are living history. This is the first few moments of uncertainty before diving right back into the mischief of the past as if no time apart had ever come to pass. This is the courage to finally venture out from the known and discover things that some never even think to wonder. This is tickling the pear. This is speaking to empty cases of armor. This is wandering behind every statue. This is looking behind every painting. This is walking down every hallway six times whispering gibberish and tapping random bricks in the wall. This is learning the place that feels like home. This is learning the people that feel like home.

This is affected brashness at 14. This is being a stranger stuck in a different stranger's body--being so focused on your own foibles you don't even realize that all the world is just like you. This is relearning the way you move, the way you feel in your skin, the way your skin feels on you. This is the desperate, directionless desire feeding that fragile, growing hope before floating up to dance in your lungs. This is realizing that your desire is not so directionless after all. This is not being able to eat properly for weeks and months because your stomach is already too full with want. This is not being able to sleep because your mind is too full of _him_ , and you can hear him breathing not 2 meters to your left. This is never quite sleeping through a whole night again.

This is the self-consciousness of 15, of having been a stranger for so long that you've started to get to know yourself again. This is not being sure that you like what you see. This is a constant stream of thoughts running through your head on repeat as you try to survive the day: is my hair okay; is my shirt tucked in funny; when did my legs get so skinny; why did I laugh at that; what is my voice doing; why did I say that; what are your hands even supposed to when you're not using them? This is the 5 minutes in the day when you are so distracted by your friends that you forget to hate yourself. This is both the quietest and busiest your mind will ever be.

This is the uneasy resignation of 16. This is the moment you decide that the world and all of the people in it can burn and you won't give it a second thought. This is you learning that you are your own harshest critic and that maybe the world looks different when you remember that you're not actually at the center of it.

This is the anxiety at 17. This is the realization that the future is out there- that the real world is waiting for you- that you're at the point in your life when you're expected to have some sort of a vision of where you will be or what you will be doing as an Adult. This is the sudden knowledge that your future, in its brightest incarnation, involves not a What or a Where, but a Who. This is the anxious hope that somehow, against all odds, everything will turn out alright in the end.

This is the complicated act of playing at "adult." This is having learned somewhere along the way that if you pretend for long enough you can fool your way into competence. This is learning to sacrifice big things for bigger things and take risks as long as the reward might conceivably justify it. This is realizing that it's okay to not live your dream as long as you live. This is waking up every morning wondering whether it is crueler to yourself to hope than it would be to lose hope. This is moving in with your best friend when your jobs fall through. This is torturing yourself every day with his presence and with that damned, painful hope that you never quite managed to dislodge from where it took root and grew and grew and grew in your gut. This is years and years (and you don't even remember how many) of telling yourself no. I can't. He doesn't. We can't. It'll never-

This is the warmth of his breath against the scruff of your neck and the cold of his fingers seeping through to your skin. This is the smell of engine grease under his fingernails and coffee on his breath and bacon in the frying pan and spring wafting through the window. This is the sizzle of the stove and the bird song that has been going since 5 this morning and the abnormal speed of his breath. This is the pounding of your heart thump thump thumping away against your ribcage and the sudden slow of time in the kitchen. This is the thoughts moving through your head so quickly you can hardly catch what they are saying. This is the hyper awareness of everything your body is doing and also the complete disconnection from everything not directly related to _him_. This is the gut-churning courage it takes to turn your head so that the two of you are nose-to-nose. This is the laser focus with which your eyes lock. This is the sound of the fork as it clatters to the counter. This is the 8 centimeters it takes you to make a connection and the 8 years it has taken you to make a connection and the 8 minutes it takes you to realize that the bacon is burning and the 8 seconds it takes to throw the frying pan in the sink with a laugh like a bark and an agreement that breakfast can wait for another time.

This is the smile in your eyes and the creases in his smile.

This is the memory that you will return to most when he is gone.

This is the moment that your friends walk into the kitchen.

"Quite the racket you're making in--"

And everything stops.

There is a moment of absolute stillness as James takes in the situation and Peter takes in the situation and you and Sirius remain frozen around each other and you wonder to yourself why this had to happen on the one morning a week when you and Sirius aren't the only people in the entire bloody house and--you just can't help it--a tiny hiccough of a laugh forces its way out of your throat.

And then a bit more of one.

And then you have both of your hands over your mouth trying valiantly to keep the hysterical laughter _inside your body_ but it's like trying to stop yourself laughing in church or during a class and you know it's hopeless.

But, fortunately, you happen to be friends with three of the loveliest, most fantastically strange humans on the planet and you find that you are not laughing alone.

And you catch Sirius' eyes, and you hold your warm fingers up to your burning cheeks, and you say, "Anyone want some breakfast?" to a rousing affirmative from all parties present.

And if you sit a bit closer to Sirius than usual, no one says anything. And if he presses his thigh to yours as you listen to James worry over his upcoming nuptials you're certainly not complaining.

And if you get pressed into the doorframe the moment James and Peter walk out the door? Then maybe for the first time since Hogwarts the Future is something you can let yourself be hopeful about.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you forever to Fishy for helping with confidence things and also with POV questions. This is the first thing I've actually written in almost 5 years. Please be gentle, but i welcome any and all constructive criticism :)


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